Henry VIII
is a history play focusing on the reign of
England's King Henry VIII
(1491-1547) up to the time of the birth of his
daughter, Elizabeth I.
Henry, the son of Henry VII, reigned from 1509
to 1547.

Composition and
Publication .Date
Written: About 1612.Publication:
1623 in the First Folio,
the first authorized collection of
Shakespeare's plays.

Sources

Shakespeare based Henry
VIII primarily on accounts in The
Chronicles of England,
Scotland and Ireland (Holinshed’s
Chronicles), by Raphael
Holinshed (?-1580?), who began work on this
history under the royal
printer Reginald Wolfe. The first edition of
the chronicles was
published in 1577 in two volumes. Shakespeare
also use Actes and
Monuments (also known as the Book of
Martyrs), by John Foxe
(1516-1587).

Time of Action

Time in Henry
VIII is compressed, making events appear
as if they took place over
a short period. In fact, they took place
between 1520 and 1533, the
year of the birth of Henry VIII’s daughter
Elizabeth, the future Queen
of England.

Place of Action.The action takes place in
England at the royal palace
in London and at residences nearby.

Characters.Protagonist:
Henry
VIIIAntagonist:
Cardinal
Wolsey .King
Henry
VIII: Proud, willful monarch who defies
Rome's ban on divorce
to marry Anne Bullen (Boleyn).Cardinal
Wolsey: Powerful Lord Chancellor of
England and accomplished
politician who manipulates the king and his
subjects in order to swell
his pocketbook and his power. He attempts to
defeat Henry's plan to
marry Anne Bullen, promoting instead a
marriage between Henry and a
French duchess. His duplicity, formidable as
it is, eventually catches
up with him, and he loses everything—power,
property, and life. But
before he dies, he repents his unpriestly
activity. In some ways, he is
the most interesting—and most human—character
in the play. Katherine
of
Arragon (Catherine of Aragon): Queen of
England until Henry
deposes her. She is the noblest and most
virtuous character in the
play. The youngest daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain, she
married Henry VIII after the death of her
first husband—Henry's
brother, Prince Arthur, oldest son of King
Henry VII of England. Anne
Bullen
(Boleyn): Maid of honor for Katherine.
Henry covets Anne and
means to make her his wife if Pope Clement VII
will annul Henry's
marriage to Katherine.Duke
of
Buckingham: Supporter of the king and
opponent of Cardinal
Wolsey.Cardinal
Campeius: Legate (envoy) from the pope.Capucius:
Ambassador
from the Emperor Charles V.Cranmer:
Archbishop
of Canterbury.Gentlemen of the King's Court:
Duke of Norfolk, Duke of Suffolk, Earl of
Surrey, Lord Chamberlain,
Lord Chancellor who succeeds Wolsey, Lord
Sandys, Sir Thomas Lovell,
Sir Henry Guildford, Sir Anthony Denny, Sir
Nicholas Vaux, Lord
Abergavenny.Gardiner:
Bishop
of Winchester.Bishops of Lincoln, Ely,
Rochester, and Saint AsaphCromwell:
Wolsey's
servant.Secretaries to WolseyGriffith:
Gentleman-usher
of Queen Katharine.Three GentlemenDoctor
Butts: Physician to the King.Garter King-at-ArmsSurveyor to the Duke of
BuckinghamBrandon:
He
gives commands to a sergeant-at-arms and
guards to arrest Buckingham.Sergeant-at-ArmsDoorkeeper of the
Council-chamberPorter and his ManPage of the Bishop of
Winchester: The
page is referred to as "Boy."Old
Lady:Friend of Anne BullenPatience:
Woman-in-waiting
of Queen Katharine.Minor
Characters:.Several lords and ladies in
the dumb shows (parts of
plays performed in pantomime), women
attendants of the queen, scribes,
officers, guards, a court crier, priests,
judges, choristers, other
attendants, spirits.

Authorship Question

Because of
stylistic differences, some scholars believe
that Henry VIII was
the
collaborative work of William Shakespeare and
John Fletcher
(1579-1625). Others are convinced that
Shakespeare wrote the entire
play. The stage directions are longer in Henry
VIII than in
other Shakespeare plays, suggesting that
another writer had a hand in
its composition. In addition, the first
act—though competently
written—seems to lack the Shakespearean word
fire that flares up in the
second and third scenes of Act II, suggesting
that Shakespeare's quill
lay at rest in parts of the play and rose to
action in other
parts.

John
Fletcher
was an English playwright who wrote for various
acting
companies—including
the King’s Men, the
same company for which Shakespeare wrote—between
the
early 1600's (probably beginning between 1604
and 1607) and the
year of his death, 1625. He sometimes
collaborated with the dramatist
Francis Beaumont and other writers, including
William Rowley, Nathan
Field, Philip Massinger, and, apparently,
Shakespeare. He may also have
collaborated with Ben Jonson and George Chapman.

Fletcher
generally
focused
more on plot twists than character development
to
generate audience interest. Among the notable
plays he wrote without
collaboration are The Loyall Subject, The
Faithfull Shepheardesse,
A Wife for a Moneth, The Chances, The Wild
Goose Chase, The Mad Lover,
The Humourous Lieutenant, Rule a Wife and Have
a Wife, Women Pleas’d,
and The Island Princesse. Among the
notable plays he wrote
with
Beaumont are A King and No King, Philaster,
and The Maides Tragedy.
Fletcher
died in London of plague.

The Importance of the Imagination

Attending a play
in Shakespeare’s time required theatregoers to
use their imaginations
to visualize settings, events, and personages
from another time. This
was no easy task, for props and special
effects were severely limited.
There was not even a curtain that opened and
closed between acts.
Sometimes a prop used in one scene had to
remain on the stage for other
scenes because it was too heavy to remove
during the play. Perhaps the
biggest limitation of all was that males
played all the characters; law
and custom forbade females from acting. It is
no wonder, then, that
Shakespeare reminded audiences from time to
time to activate their
imaginations at the beginning of a
performance. He did so in Henry V,
and
he did so again in Henry VIII. In a
prologue at the
beginning of Henry VIII, the speaker
tells the audience to

Think
ye
see The very persons of our noble
story As they were living; think you
see them great, And follow’d with the general
throng and sweatOf thousand friends; then, in a
moment see How soon this mightiness meets
misery: And if you can be merry then,
I’ll say A man may weep upon his wedding
day.

Oddly,
though,
it was the very limitations of the stages of the
Globe and
other theatres where Shakespeare presented his
plays that helped make
his plays popular with theatregoers and readers
of every age, as the
following quotation points out:

Whenever
place or time mattered [in a Shakespeare
play],
some references to them could be introduced
into the dialogue, and if
special atmospheric or dramatic effects were
needed, they could be
created by the poet’s pen. Hence, it is to the
Elizabethan stage that
we are indebted in great measure for the
exquisite descriptive poetry
of Shakespeare. Such conditions, moreover,
encouraged a greater
imaginative cooperation on the part of the
audience in the production
of a play, and this active participation was
further increased by the
informality of the platform stage. With such
intimacy, soliloquies,
asides, and long set speeches are natural and
not absurd as they are in
modern theatre. (Watt, Homer A., and Karl J.
Holzknecht. Outlines
of Shakespeare’s Plays. New York:
Barnes, 1947, page 8)

It will help
me nothing To plead mine innocence; for that
dye is on me Which makes my whit’st part
black. The will of heaven Be done in this and all things! I
obey. (1.1.247-250)

Meanwhile,
the king’s wife, Katherine of Arragon
(1485-1536), importunes Henry to
relieve a tax burden on the people. Katherine’s
plea springs from
genuine concern for the welfare of her subjects.
She is good and
sincere and caring. Her motives, unlike those of
Wolsey, are pure,
without taint of desire for political gain or
fortune. The tax—recently
imposed by Wolsey without the king’s
knowledge—requires citizens to pay
the Crown one-sixth of their income, supposedly
to defray the costs of
military action against France. Henry says he
knows nothing of the tax.
When he asks Wolsey about it, the cardinal plays
dumb. The king
resolves the issue by granting Katherine’s wish,
repealing the onerous
tax law and absolving activists who opposed
it. Out of hearing of
the king, Wolsey orders letters sent to every
county in England
announcing that it was he who persuaded Henry to
unburden the populace
of new taxation. As
to Buckingham, Queen Katherine pleads on his
behalf to the king.
However, a surveyor apparently under the control
of Wolsey, tells Henry
that

If
the
king Should without issue die,
[Buckingham will act] To make the sceptre his: these
very words I’ve heard him utter to his
son-in-law. (1.2.151-154)

Henry
holds this issue in abeyance while attending to
other matters—in
particular, a banquet at Wolsey’s residence at
which he meets the
comely Anne Bullen (1507-1536), the daughter of
Sir Thomas Bullen. When
Henry dances with her, she captivates him and he
says, “The fairest
hand I ever touch’d! O beauty, / Till now I
never knew thee!” (1.4.100-101).
At
a trial, Buckingham is declared a traitor and
sentenced to death.
Afterward, he forgives his accusers, then yields
his neck to the
executioner’s axe. But Henry does not dwell on
Buckingham’s death;
instead he bends his mind toward Anne. To make
room for her, he claims
that his marriage to Katherine is profane. After
all, she is the widow
of his own brother, Arthur. (There was a belief,
prevalent before and
during the Sixteenth Century, that marriage to
an in-law was a form of
incest.) Also, Henry asks: Could not the child
Katherine has given him,
Mary, be considered illegitimate, as a bishop
has suggested? Deeply
disturbed by these matters, Henry tells Wolsey
and the Bishop of
Lincoln that

This
respite
shook The bosom of my conscience,
enter’d me, Yea, with a splitting power, and
made to tremble The region of my breast; which
forced such way, That many mazed considerings did
throng And press’d in. (2.4.195-200)

Meanwhile,
in a conversation with an old lady in an
antechamber of the queen’s
apartment, Anne expresses pity for Katherine
after hearing that the
king means to renounce his marriage to her. Anne
declares that she
herself would not want to be queen—“not for all
the riches under
heaven” (2.3.45). The old lady pronounces Anne a
fool for saying such a
thing. At that moment, the Lord Chamberlain
interrupts their
conversation to announce that the king admires
Anne and has conferred
on her the title of Marchioness of Pembroke and
a purse of a thousand
pounds a year.
Later,
in a courtroom, Henry, Wolsey, a papal envoy
named Cardinal Campeius,
and other officials hold a hearing on whether
Katherine’s marriage to
the king is valid. Katherine defends her honor
and her loyalty to
Henry, then impugns Wolsey as the instigator of
the hearing. Wolsey
denies the charge even though it was he who
urged the king to
invalidate the marriage. However, Wolsey
strongly opposes marriage
between Henry and Anne, a Lutheran. Instead, he
wants Henry to marry
the Catholic Duchess of Alençon, the French
king’s sister, to
form an alliance with France.
“I’ll
no Anne Bullens for him,” Wolsey says. “ There’s
more in’t than fair
visage” (3.2.119-120).
When
Katherine appeals to Pope Clement VII to prevent
a divorce, Wolsey
abets her by sending letters to Rome to seek a
delay in the requested
divorce proceedings; his purpose is to gain time
to promote his plans
for Henry to marry the duchess. But the letters
miscarry and end up in
Henry’s hands. In an antechamber of the king’s
apartments, the Duke of
Norfolk and the Duke of Suffolk disclose this
information to the Earl
of Surrey. The three men are Wolsey’s
adversaries. A fourth adversary,
the Lord Chamberlain, tells the other three that
the letters were for
naught anyway, for the king has already married
Anne Bullen (on January
25, 1533) and scheduled her coronation. It was
not the Pope who
annulled Henry’s marriage to Katherine, but the
Archbishop of
Canterbury. He did so, without Vatican approval,
to ingratiate himself
with the king.
While
the two dukes and the earl continue their
conversation, Wolsey enters
the room, followed moments later by the king.
Henry presents Wolsey the
intercepted letters, then walks away, frowning.
Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Surrey crowd around the cardinal, telling him to
surrender the great
seal (with which official papers are stamped to
signify the king’s
approval), the symbol of his power as Lord
Chancellor.
Surrey
is especially pleased at Wolsey’s sudden
reversal of fortune—and with
good reason: the beheaded Buckingham was his
father-in-law. He,
Suffolk, and Norfolk then charge Wolsey with a
catalogue of offenses,
including making numerous agreements with
foreign rulers without King
Henry’s knowledge. Suffolk tells Wolsey he must
forfeit all of his
property—lands, buildings, chattels—to the
Crown. Sir Thomas More is to
replace him as Lord Chancellor. Wolsey has only
one course of action:
to retire from court. When bidding farewell to
his old friend and
servant Cromwell, Wolsey repents his past
actions, surrenders his
fortune to the king, and advises Cromwell to
eschew ambition, saying,
“Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that
hate thee; / Corruption
wins not more than honesty” (3.2.522-523).
Anne
becomes queen; Katherine becomes princess
dowager and takes up
residence at Kimbolton, where illness afflicts
her. She asks Griffith,
her gentleman-usher, what has become of Wolsey.
Griffith tells her that
he was received at an abbey at Leicester and
three days later—“full of
repentance, / Continual meditations, tears, and
sorrows”
(4.2.33-34)—died. Capucius, an ambassador
serving the Holy Roman
emperor Charles V, visits Katherine at the
request of Henry to tell her
that the king wishes her good health. She tells
Capucius that time has
run out for her but expresses hope that Henry
prospers while she keeps
company with worms in her grave. Katherine asks
Capucius to deliver a
message asking the king to give their daughter,
Mary, a proper
upbringing with every advantage and to look
kindly on the women and men
who served Katherine.
Archbishop
Cranmer, the rubber stamp who annulled Henry’s
marriage to Katherine,
proves unpopular with the nobles, and only the
king’s intervention
prevents him from imprisonment in the Tower of
London. At the
christening of Henry and Anne’s child,
Elizabeth, Cranmer predicts a
glorious future for the child and England:

This royal
infant—heaven still move about her!— Though in her cradle, yet now
promises Upon this land a thousand
thousand blessings, Which time shall bring to
ripeness: she shall be— But few now living can behold
that goodness— A pattern to all princes living
with her, And all that shall succeed. . . .
(5. 5. 23-29)

Themes.Great
power
breeds great corruption. Powerful English
leaders misuse
their authority for their own ends. Cardinal
Wolsey appears the most
reprehensible character in the play. But after
his downfall, he repents
his abuses. Others who misuse their power
include King Henry and the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Rulership requires constant
vigilance. For a
long time, Henry delegated his authority to
Cardinal Wolsey, who used
the authority to pursue his own agenda and
fatten his personal coffers.Henry VIII thirsts for a form of
immortality—the
perpetuation of himself and his royal line in
the form of a male heir. In the
face of papal excommunication, Henry divorces
Katherine to marry
Anne Bullen (Boleyn) and beget a male
heir. Women suffer ill treatment in a
male-dominated society. Henry
and his advisors manipulate Katherine (Catherine
of Aragon, the queen)
and Anne for their own ends. The king believes a
female heir is
unacceptable. Ironically, two of his
daughters—Mary (by Catherine of
Aragon) and Elizabeth (by Anne Boleyn)—became
queens of England. Mary
ruled from 1553 to 1558; Elizabeth ruled from
1558 to 1603.It
is
never too late to repent. Near death,
Cardinal Wolsey repents
his past actions, surrenders his fortune to the
king, and advises
Cromwell to eschew ambition, saying, "Love
thyself last: cherish those
hearts that hate thee; / Corruption wins not
more than honesty"
(3.2.522-523). In so doing, he appears to redeem
himself.

Conflicts

One

The
supporters of the king's marriage to
Anne Bullen, a Protestant, are in conflict with
Wolsey, who has been
plotting to sabotage the marriage while
promoting a marriage between
the king and the Catholic sister of the king of
France. Henry VIII
becomes involved in the conflict when he learns
that Wolsey secretly
acted against his wishes.

Two

Katherine
of Aragon is in conflict with
Wolsey because of his abuse of power.

Three

Katherine
of Aragon is in conflict with
the king because of his renunciation of his
marriage to her.

Three

Supporters
of the Duke of Buckingham are
in conflict with Wolsey because the cardinal
poisoned the king's ear
against Buckingham, who is innocent of
wrongdoing.

Climax

The climax of Henry
VIII occurs the second scene of Act 3,
when Henry asserts his
kingly authority to reclaim power from
Cardinal Wolsey. Previously, he
had allowed Wolsey to make decisions on his
behalf. The moment comes
after the king learns that Wolsey attempted to
sabotage the king's plan
to marry Anne Bullen. Wolsey wanted to arrange
a marriage between the
king and the Catholic Duchess of Alençon, the
French king’s
sister, in order to form an alliance with
France.

Figures of Speech

Following are
examples of figures of speech in the play. For
definitions of figures
of speech, see Literary
Terms.

Alliteration

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself.
(1.1.170-171)

This cunning cardinal The articles o’ the combination drew As himself pleas’d; and they were ratified
(1.1.201-203)

Here’s the pang that pinches. (2.3.3)

You,
O
fate!
104 A very fresh-fish here,—fie, fie, upon This compell’d fortune!—have your mouth fill’d up Before you open it. (2.3.104-107)

They vex me past my patience. Pray you, pass on. (2.4.141)

Anaphora

Think ye seeThe very persons of our noble
story As they were living; think
you
see them
great, And follow’d with the general
throng and sweat
28 Of thousand friends. (Prologue,
25-29)

Metaphor

I
can
see
his
pride Peep through each part of him.
(1.1.80-81)Comparison of pride to an
observer

This
butcher’s cur is venom-mouth’d, and I Have not the power to muzzle
him. (1.1.145-146)Comparison
of Cardinal Wolsey to a dog (cur)

It
will
help
me
nothing To plead mine innocence, for
that dye is on me Which makes my whit’st part
black. (1.1.247-249)Comparison
of incrimination or accusation to black
dye

Heaven
will
one
day
open The king’s eyes, that so long
have slept upon This bold bad man.
(2.2.40-42) Comparison
of the king's oversight to a sleep

Rome, the
nurse of judgment (2.2.106)Comparison
of the Vatican (Rome) to a nurse
Now
I
feel
Of what coarse metal ye are
moulded, envy. (3.2.293-294)Wolsey
compares the makeup of Norfolk and Suffolk
to envy
molded from metal.

If
we
live
thus
tamely, To be thus jaded by a piece of
scarlet, Farewell nobility.
(3.2.338-340)Surrey
contemptuously compares Wolsey to a piece
of the
scarlet robe the cardenal wears.

Metaphor
and
Synecdoche

The more
shame for ye! holy men I thought ye,
Upon
my soul, two
reverend cardinal virtues;
But
cardinal sins
and hollow hearts I fear ye. (3.1.106-108)Metaphor:
Katherine
compares Cardinals Wolsey and Campeius first
to virtues, then
to sins.Synecdoche:
Katherine
uses hearts to represent the persons
of Wolsey and
Campeius.

Paradox

More than my
all is nothing. (2.3.84)

Simile

To-day
the
French All clinquant, all in gold, like
heathen gods, Shone down the English.Comparison of the French to
"heathen gods"

He counsels
a divorce; a loss of her, That like a jewel has hung
twenty years About his neck, yet never lost
her lustre. (2.2.29-31)Comparison
of Katherine to a jewel

All
men’s
honours Lie like one lump before him,
to be
fashion’d Into what pitch he please.
(2.2.47-49)Comparison
of honours to a lump

Like
the
lily,
That
once was
mistress of the field and flourish’d,
I’ll
hang my head
and perish. (3.1.157-159)Katharine
compares
herself to a lily

Her
foes shake
like a field of beaten corn (5.5.37)Comparison
of
the trembling of Elizabeth's future enemies
to the shaking of a field
of corn

Globe Theatre Burns During Henry
VIII Performance .During
a performance of Henry VIII on June, 29,
1613, the Globe
Theatre burned down. Apparently, ordnance
heralding the entrance of the
actor playing Henry VIII ignited the thatched
roof. The Globe was
rebuilt with a non-flammable tile roof. However,
it was torn down in
1644 after a fire of another sort, Puritan zeal,
closed all theatres.
Puritans were strict Protestants who favored
strait-laced living and
opposed theatre performances. After the Globe
was razed, tenements
replaced it. Between September 2 and 5, 1666,
the Great Fire of
London—which destroyed more than thirteen
thousand dwellings and more
than eighty churches—consumed the foundations
and whatever else was
left of the Globe. Not a stick of wood from it
was left. Modern
recreations of the Globe are based on 17th
Century descriptions and
drawings.

Henry's Break
From Rome

Parliament
approved the Act of Supremacy in 1534,
establishing the Church of
England as a Protestant entity under King
Henry VIII. Events leading to
this action commenced in 1527. At that time,
Henry embarked on a
campaign to win papal annulment of his
marriage to Catherine of Aragon,
enabling him to marry Anne Boleyn and attempt
to sire a male heir to
the throne. Thomas Cromwell, an ambitious
politician and adviser to the
king, managed the king’s campaign. But Pope
Clement VII steadfastly
refused to annul the marriage.

On January 25, 1533, Henry
married Anne in secret. On
March 30, 1533, Thomas Cranmer, a priest who
enjoyed the king’s favor,
became the Archbishop of Canterbury, swearing
an oath to the Pope even
though he was a de facto Protestant who
sympathized with Martin
Luther’s revolt against Rome. In April,
Cromwell won parliamentary
approval of the Act in Restraint of Appeals,
which outlawed matrimonial
appeals to Rome and acknowledged England as a
sovereign empire. In May,
Cranmer approved the king’s annulment and, in
June, Anne Boleyn was
publicly recognized as the English queen.
Finally, in 1534, the Act of
Succession forced English citizens to
acknowledge Henry’s marriage as
legal and the Act of Supremacy sanctioned
Henry as head of the Church
of England. Cranmer, accepting this act as
valid, thus became the first
Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury.

Cardinal Wolsey

Oxford-educated
Thomas Wolsey (1475-1530), the son of a
butcher, received Holy Orders
as a Roman Catholic priest in 1498 and became
chaplain to Henry VIII's
father, King Henry VII, in 1507. When Henry
VIII became king in 1509,
Wolsey won appointment as royal almoner and
two years later as a a
privy councillor. In 1513, he masterminded an
invasion of France and
negotiated a treaty in the next year. From
1514 to 1515, with the
king's blessing, he received appointments from
the Vatican as bishop of
Lincoln, archbishop of York, and cardinal.

In 1515, Wolsey became Lord
Chancellor of England and
the de facto overseer of government affairs,
both foreign and domestic,
all the while amassing a considerable personal
fortune. His wealth and
power rivaled the king's, and his legal mind
was first rate. But he
fell from grace after failing to persuade Pope
Clement VII to dissolve
Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon in
1533. He was arrested for
treason but died soon thereafter.

Study Questions
and Essay Topics

1...Which character in the play is
the most admirable?
Which is the least admirable?2...Write an essay that
uses Henry VIII to demonstrate how ruthless
politicians maneuver to get
their way.3...Write an essay that
attempts to determine whether Shakespeare’s
presentation of events in
the play was an accurate reflection of
history?4...Write a psychological
profile of the historical Henry VIII, Cardinal
Wolsey, Catherine of
Aragon, or Anne Boleyn.5...In monarchies,
rulership passes to a son or daughter of the
king and queen. Is a
monarchy a flawed system of government? Or
does it have its
merits? .